A Nano-Vehicle to Fight Brain Cancer

Treating a brain tumor in a lab dish is easy. Scientists have developed a full arsenal of treatments to kill tumor cells, using natural toxins, chemotherapeutic drugs, and even gene therapy to send them to an early grave. But making those therapies work in the actual setting of the brain is a much different ballgame. The first major challenge is even delivering the therapy to the right place, as any drug must get past the brain’s defense systems and navigate the organ’s complex architecture. In addition, the therapy must be a picky killer, eradicating tumor cells while leaving the healthy brain cells intact.

Researchers are therefore searching for a smarter delivery system that can maximize the effectiveness of these brain tumor therapies, collaborating with experts in the world of chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Bakhtiar Yamini, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine, is collaborating on one such effort with a biotechnology company in Nebraska, targeting the most difficult malignant brain tumors Yamini sees in his neurosurgery practice. By designing a new nanoparticle “shell” capable of selectively targeting therapeutics to brain tumor cells — and capable of being watched as it travels through the brain — the research team hopes to make eradicating these cells in their native environment as simple as killing them in a dish.

“Even though new therapies are being developed that can kill cells in culture, getting them into the brain tumor is a big problem, so development of a vehicle is an important step,” Yamini said. “People have previously used both targeting and image guidance in the treatment of other cancers, but bringing these two strategies together in one vehicle is something that would be really useful.”

In Phase I of their NIH-funded project, Yamini and collaborators at LNKChemsolutions developed a nanoparticle made from materials such as polylactic acid and polycaprolactone. Despite the complicated chemical names, these materials are commonly used in biodegradable products — a feature that offers an advantage over other nanoparticles made from gold, titanium, and other metals. The nanoparticles are also customizable, able to carry a variety of therapeutics and different targeting signals, and incorporate a metal, iron oxide, that allows doctors to visualize the nanoparticles’ travels using MRI technology.

For Phase II of the project, funded late last year, the team is taking their technology to animal models. A nanoparticle designed to target a protein called the EGF receptor (often overexpressed by tumor cells) and deliver the chemotherapy drug temozolomide will be tested in mice and rats that have brain tumors. If those experiments are a success, the team will try the therapy on a larger animal model: dogs. Partnering with veterinary clinics in Chicago and Minnesota, the researchers will offer the treatment to pet owners willing to volunteer their sick dog for a cutting-edge therapy.

“That’s how we will develop the treatment, but at the same time it should be effective at helping the dogs,” Yamini said. “It’s essentially a clinical trial for dogs that have brain tumors, and because their tumors are very similar to human ones, the results in the dogs will have relevance to humans.”

Because of the blood-brain barrier, which prevents most molecules from passing from the body’s blood supply into the brain, just injecting the nanoparticles into a vein won’t work. Directly infusing particles into the brain during surgery to remove the tumor is possible, but the spread of particles by that method can be unpredictable and may miss the target. Instead, Yamini will use a method known as convection enhanced delivery to push the nanoparticles very slowly into the desired area of the brain, squeezing them through the space between brain cells. The iron oxide tags will allow surgeons to monitor the path of the nanoparticles by MRI as they are being infused through the brain.

“The image guidance is a big factor, because ‘blind’ infusion of the nanoparticles can be problematic,” Yamini said. “If you plan to treat the upper right corner and you see, on MRI, that the infusion actually went to the lower left, you can put your catheter back in and try again. This paradigm of ‘adaptive image guidance’ allows you to adjust subsequent treatments to target the areas that were missed on the original injection.”

If the Phase II experiments and (hopefully) subsequent clinical trials are a success, Yamini sees great potential for the nanoparticle delivery system. The customizability of the nanoparticle means that different targeting signals can be swapped out or combined to treat different types of tumors, and an individualized nanoparticle can be designed for each patient based on the specific ‘signature’ of their tumor. Instead of chemotherapeutic drugs or toxins, more advanced interventions such as short interfering RNA (siRNA) or gene therapy may be possible passengers inside the nanoparticles. In addition, the technology could be useful for neurological conditions beyond cancer, allowing clinicians to carefully target therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease or neurodegenerative disorders to specific regions and cells of the brain.

“If it works, it can be used for any kind of cancer, and not only cancer,” Yamini said. “You could use it for a range of different of diseases, theoretically, as long as you can find an appropriate target.”